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The Verge
an hour ago
- The Verge
Let the Wookiee win.
Posted Aug 5, 2025 at 8:43 PM UTC 1/2 Pressing a button on the ornament activates lighting effects, turns on the Dejarik game, and plays sounds from the scene in Star Wars. Image: Hallmark Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Andrew Liszewski Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Andrew Liszewski Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Film Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gadgets Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Star Wars
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Allan Ahlberg, Whose Children's Books Were Best Sellers, Dies at 87
Allan Ahlberg, an introvert who became a beloved author of blithesome, best-selling children's books through collaborations with his wife, Janet Ahlberg, and other illustrators, died on July 29 in England. He was 87. His death was announced by his publisher, Penguin Random House, which did not identify a specific location or a cause. As a young man, Mr. Ahlberg held a series of solitary jobs, including digging graves. 'I was looking for a job in the open air where they left you alone,' he told the British newspaper The Independent in 2008. 'I became a gravedigger by a process of elimination,' he said. 'I had been a plumber's mate, a soldier and a postman.' But he fantasized about becoming a writer. 'I had all the romantic notions of the white suit and the panama hat,' he said in a 2006 interview with The Guardian. 'All the Somerset Maugham images without any words to support them.' It wasn't until he was 22, and attending Sunderland Teacher Training College (now part of the University of Sunderland), that he met Janet Hall, his future wife, and was inspired to fulfill his dream. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
The big question inside Disney: What's going to happen to Hulu?
Nine Disney streaming staffers tell Business Insider that it's become impossible to ignore the company's increasing emphasis on Disney+ over Hulu. "Internally, the Hulu brand isn't a priority," an employee on the ads side of Disney's streaming business said. The Mouse House has been steering bundle subscribers to the Disney+ app by loading it with most Hulu movies and shows and some ESPN content. Unbundled Disney subscribers can also watch some Hulu and ESPN shows free of charge on Disney+. But Disney+ content isn't available on Hulu. Disney CEO Bob Iger said in May that these changes are "definitely having a positive impact" on the streamer's engagement and cancellation rate. Disney is also making changes internally. It's discouraging Hulu-only ad buys and merging the platforms' ad servers, employees said. Two sales-side employees said they need special permission to sell a Hulu-only ad spot, excluding certain interactive ads that only work on Hulu. They said the sales team is pushing advertisers instead to buy across both Disney+ and Hulu, as part of what one of the staffers called a "massive" companywide push "to prioritize Disney+ over everything." And last week, Disney moved to a unified ad server for Disney+ and Hulu. This shift, known internally as "Mission Control," was labor-intensive and at times painful but necessary, the employees said. "Everything going through one ad server makes a lot less work for everyone involved when it comes to getting ad campaigns live," the first ads employee said. Disney's changes show the Hulu brand is now decidedly on the back burner, this person said. They viewed the shift as mostly positive and said further unification of Disney+ and Hulu would give consumers a better experience while simplifying the ad sales process. Hulu fans' migration to Disney+ is off to a slow start, so far. Two Disney streaming employees with access to viewer data said the overwhelming majority of Hulu viewership still comes directly from the Hulu app, not through Disney+. Hulu has centered its identity on dramas and comedies for adults and next-day TV. Disney is seeing some progress, though: One Hulu-focused streaming employee said the "Hulu on Disney+" section has been starting to get more engagement as subscribers start to discover that they can use Disney+ as an all-in-one app. However, the Hulu-focused employee, who's familiar with the service's analytics, said many Hulu subscribers don't pay for Disney+ and aren't necessarily interested in its family-friendly content dominated by franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney animation. Several media analysts support Disney's direction, though, in going all in on Disney+. Further integrating Hulu into Disney+ could save the company about $3 billion through "the elimination of duplicative technology and administrative costs," MoffettNathanson's Robert Fishman said in a mid-July note. UBS media analyst John Hodulik told BI in July that Disney fully consolidating Hulu into Disney+ is "one of the steps they need to take to Netflix-ify their streaming business." Impacts on Hulu's business Although Hulu still gets most of its viewership from its stand-alone app, there are signs Disney's emphasis on Disney+ could be affecting its ad business. According to analysts at MoffettNathanson, Hulu generated the most US ad revenue of any paid streaming service in the second quarter, thanks to its mature ads business, which launched in 2008. However, Hulu's ad revenue fell an estimated 0.3% last quarter, MoffettNathanson said. Hulu was the lone paid streaming service that didn't grow ad revenue in the second quarter, according to the firm. Meanwhile, Disney+ saw its advertising revenue soar 67% year-over-year in that same span, MoffettNathanson said. Despite that, Disney+ has a long way to go to catch up. Hulu's ad revenue was more than four times that of Disney+ last quarter, MoffettNathanson said. "Hulu having slightly lower ad revenue year-over-year while Disney+ has seen a huge increase makes perfect sense to me," the first employee on the ad sales side said, considering the company's continued emphasis on Disney+ over Hulu. Another Disney+ employee said that "eyeballs are shifting into the Disney+ interface," in line with what one of their Hulu-focused colleagues said. Both Disney+ and Hulu have seen gradual subscriber growth, even though Disney hiked prices of each service's ad and ad-free tiers last October. Hulu is well ahead of Disney+ in how much money it makes per subscriber in the US. Hulu brought in $12.36 per subscriber in the first three months of this year, while Disney+ only generated two-thirds of that sum. But Hulu's average revenue per subscriber has fallen in each of the last three quarters, while Disney+'s has steadily risen. Life after Hulu? The idea of shuttering the stand-alone Hulu service has been raised internally as a thought experiment, an employee on the business side of Disney's streaming division who had been involved in those discussions said. "Every time we go through that in our long-range plan, these things come up," this person said. "You're looking at, 'Alright, what would happen if we did this? Could we cut this? Could we merge? What would happen?' So you do those analyses in the background, but not all of them ever come to see the light of day." A longtime Hulu employee said that Disney's focus with streaming has been on a "unified platform." They added that Hulu's tech had "serious degradation" issues and could feel outdated, given that it's one of the oldest streaming services. Still, one potential issue with shutting down Hulu as a stand-alone app is that it's emotionally intertwined with the brand for staffers, sometimes called "Hulugans." "Old employees have an affinity for it," a second veteran Hulu employee said.
